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I was just reading about this leaked list of requested features to the successor to Windows Vista, and thought about the translation of that concept to youth ministry. There are hundreds of ideas out there waiting to be uncovered, many of which are better than the ones you could come up with by yourself. I'm sure the developers thought for weeks and months about making the best operating system, and in just a few weeks of release there's more than 16,000 tweaks and changes in the queue.

That's the power of people. Too often youth ministry is done in seclusion, where there's almost a resistance to the possible idea factory that could be generated in community.

When was the last time you got together in a group of volunteers and asked about the topics you should cover for the coming year?

When was the last time you had a creative brainstorming meeting to program a weekend or a retreat?

When was the last time you role played with your group and asked them how they would handle a particular situation?

When was the last time you put your programs up on the chopping block in the search for what was genuinely best, not what we did last year?